Today realdealt spotted another new R-L21 with a Spanish surname. He's in the Iberian Ashkenaz project: Andrada, kit 182680. I can't find him in Ysearch, but I emailed the admin of that project to try to recruit him for the R-L21 Plus Project.

The entry just lists "Spain" as the ancestral place of origin, with no further details.

Today realdealt spotted another new R-L21 with a Spanish surname. He's in the Iberian Ashkenaz project: Andrada, kit 182680. I can't find him in Ysearch, but I emailed the admin of that project to try to recruit him for the R-L21 Plus Project.

The entry just lists "Spain" as the ancestral place of origin, with no further details.

Andrada has joined the project. He traces his most distant y-dna ancestor to Mexico, so he's in the "New World: Spanish or Portuguese Surname" category.

Going only by the project and Myres et al acknowledging the limitations of this, I still feel there is a pattern. If you ignore Madrid the Iberian L21 seems to fall into vague groupings. There is a group in the area near the French border, especially the Basque Country. There is a second group (which IMO is somewhat unexpected) in the SW of Spain inland from Cadiz. There is a weak suggestion of a 3rd group along the Atlantic seaboard of Iberia but this is IMO unexpectedly weak. Its the peak in the NE of Spain in and adjacent to the Basque Country and the Spanish border that stands out for me. There seems to be a lack of a compelling case for the Atlantic Bronze Age model as it seems that there is not exactly a ton of L21 in Portugal and NW Spain. I have a totally open mind on this but the looking for an Iberian origin for L21 to date is very counterintuitive and has a lot more to do with overcrediting the historical content of Irish mythology than it has to reading of the DNA evidence.

As far as I can see both the frequency peak outside the British Isles and the highest variance are in the northern half of France. That answers the question of L21 origins as far as I am concerned although caveated by the lack of a systematic sample. If you look at variance and you look at the upstream phylogeny then surely the current working hypothesis supported by the evidence is that L21 occurred among S116* people who had entered northern France from the east and that they crossed to England not too much later.

Regarding Kimhi (and variations), I have received subsequent emails, and two more descendants of that same ancestor have joined the project. They apparently all come from a famous rabbinical family and descend from one of the most famous rabbis of all time, David Kimhi (also known as RaDak):

The fact that DYS439, a pretty fast mutating marker, has remained unchanged makes us hypothesize that everything has happened in restricted times.If those clades presuppose an unique family line or are picked up here and there it is difficult to say and only a large scale research could answer, but its diffusion overall in the R-L21 world makes us think to independent stocks which, of course, have a far unique origin.

Was doing more research on this DYS439=11 and Z253+ business and took another look at the four (claimed) Rabbi Yosef Kimhi descendents that I "thought" I knew about. I don't know how I missed it before, but only TWO of these supposed descendents are probable. The other two are confirmed L21- according to their only SNP test, and could not possibly be related to the L21+ tested pair. These L21- are maybe R-P312*, but I don't really know since the only SNP that was tested was L21.

Anyway, the thought was that there may be something more here about DYS439=11, Iberia, Sephardim, the Baltic Cluster (and maybe Z253+ as a continental SNP). It is consistent with Maliclavelli's statements above, but here one would need to presume that the "clade mother" is pre-L21, and the Kimchi and Baltic "clade daughters" are post-L21.

Was doing more research on this DYS439=11 and Z253+ business and took another look at the four (claimed) Rabbi Yosef Kimhi descendents that I "thought" I knew about. I don't know how I missed it before, but only TWO of these supposed descendents are probable. The other two are confirmed L21- according to their only SNP test, and could not possibly be related to the L21+ tested pair. These L21- are maybe R-P312*, but I don't really know since the only SNP that was tested was L21.

Of course, maybe the two REAL descendents of Rabbi Yosef Kimhi are the L21- pair, and the ones that are not true descendents are the L21+ pair. I suppose we can see what happens with further Z253+ testing of more Iberians.

Of course, maybe the two REAL descendents of Rabbi Yosef Kimhi are the L21- pair, and the ones that are not true descendents are the L21+ pair. I suppose we can see what happens with further Z253+ testing of more Iberians.

You are welcome to read more about the Kimhi family investigations (coordinated by a former FTDNA project administrator) at the following link. At the time this article was published, it was assumed that all four of these Kimhi descendents were all related. And maybe this is the case, but certainly not on a direct paternal line to Rabbi Yosef Kimhi. Points to the dangers of only testing 12 markers.

There's a new Spanish R-L21 (new to me, anyway): Lenares, kit N43805, Ysearch JDTJC. I found him in the Iberian Peninsula Project....This one has a bunch of fairly close McCracken matches at 67 and 37 markers.

There's a new Spanish R-L21 (new to me, anyway): Lenares, kit N43805, Ysearch JDTJC. I found him in the Iberian Peninsula Project....This one has a bunch of fairly close McCracken matches at 67 and 37 markers.

There's a new Spanish R-L21 (new to me, anyway): Lenares, kit N43805, Ysearch JDTJC. I found him in the Iberian Peninsula Project....This one has a bunch of fairly close McCracken matches at 67 and 37 markers.

Which of them is Z253+? That is interesting because Lenares is of Spanish ancestry, but the rest are not.

Let's go over to the Z253 thread. Some of the clusters may not be firm and may need to be broken up. Generally, I list the haplogroup. Something like R-L21 means all of the downstream SNPs have not been tested where as R-L21/Z153 indicates there is a positive confirmation on Z153.

The surname Lenares doesn´t exist in Spanish, the real surname was probably Linares . It is a widely spread surname in Spain, mainly in Andalusia, where there is a town called Linares. The first mention of the surname, however, shows up in Santander c.1200 AD, but it is very likely that many Linares got their surname from the city, or even from a local geographic feature (Linares meaning Flax crops)

I was glancing through the "Need L21 or Deep Clade Testing" category at the R-L21 Plus Project and discovered that Escalante, kit N10695, just got the first of his Deep Clade results, and is L21+, L226-. Since his mdka came from Mexico, I moved him to the "New World: Spanish or Portuguese Surname" category.

He does not belong to either of the couple of known Spanish clusters and has no 67-marker matches. Escalante has no Ysearch entry as of yet, as far as I can tell without looking too hard.

I was glancing through the "Need L21 or Deep Clade Testing" category at the R-L21 Plus Project and discovered that Escalante, kit N10695, just got the first of his Deep Clade results, and is L21+, L226-. Since his mdka came from Mexico, I moved him to the "New World: Spanish or Portuguese Surname" category.

He does not belong to either of the couple of known Spanish clusters and has no 67-marker matches. Escalante has no Ysearch entry as of yet, as far as I can tell without looking too hard.

Escalante, kit N10695 is Ysearch ZPJMX. There is another Escalante, kit 106345 who is Ysearch UA552 and I believe he is the uncle of Escalante, kit N10695. He would also be R-L21 then.

It could seem to whom who don’t believe to my theory (I remember: 1) mutations around the modal 2) convergence to the modal as time passes 3) sometime mutations go for the tangent) that the Spaniard Escalante R-L21 is in the “modal” for many values of his.But look at:DYS511=8DYS557=19DYS481=24DYS487=15DYS572=10

Then : he is probably very ancient, at the origin of R-L21, who was born in Iberia and diffused along the Atlantic coast to the Isles. His values in the modal have had probably many “mutations around the modal”.

I was glancing through the "Need L21 or Deep Clade Testing" category at the R-L21 Plus Project and discovered that Escalante, kit N10695, just got the first of his Deep Clade results, and is L21+, L226-. Since his mdka came from Mexico, I moved him to the "New World: Spanish or Portuguese Surname" category.

He does not belong to either of the couple of known Spanish clusters and has no 67-marker matches. Escalante has no Ysearch entry as of yet, as far as I can tell without looking too hard.

Escalante, kit N10695 is Ysearch ZPJMX. There is another Escalante, kit 106345 who is Ysearch UA552 and I believe he is the uncle of Escalante, kit N10695. He would also be R-L21 then.

Thanks, Robert.

When I saw he had gotten an L21+ result, I just looked real quickly to see if he had a Ysearch entry connected to his myFTDNA pages. At the time, he didn't. When I wrote him to advise him of his new results, I asked him to create a Ysearch entry, but probably he already had that one. I didn't really go looking for it.

I also asked him to join the Iberian Peninsula DNA project. Hopefully, he'll do that.